IOM loses clean image

KATHMANDU, Oct 6: The senior professors at the Tribhuvan University´s Institute of Medicine (IOM) proudly claim the institution had once defied the then King Birendra´s directive to enroll a student for the Bachelor of Medicine Bachelor of Surgery (MBBS) program during the panchayat regime.

Those glory days now look a thing of distant past as the institution regularly gets embroiled in one controversy after another.
The latest has been a police raid in Maitidevi on Saturday to foil an alleged attempt to get the question papers for the MBBS entrance exams scheduled for Sunday leaked.

“The questions for the MBBS entrance exams have not been leaked,” claimed Member Secretary of the Bachelor Level Entrance Examination Committee for this year Dr Ramesh Acharya.

“I challenge everyone to prove that the questions were leaked,” Dr Acharya declared and accused the police and media of a smear campaign to defame the institute.

“The way media covered the whole episode and the quotes police officers gave, gave public a false impression that the question papers were indeed leaked,” Dr Acharya fumed. Police investigation is on but it will be very hard to prove that the questions were going to be leaked.

The entrance exams for MBBS and other bachelor courses in medicine were completed without any trouble Sunday and IOM may indeed bring out a fair result. But the image of the institute has already taken a beating following the controversy after post graduate entrance exams in March.

The Tribhuvan University Teaching Hospital (TUTH) suffered a 17-day strike from March 15 after the students accused the Dean Office of gross irregularities in the post graduate entrance exams.

A high-level probe committee formed on March 31 under the chairmanship of former education secretary Jayaram Giri had found the handling of IOM affairs dubious and recommended further investigation by a separate body of the state in its report, a copy of which Republica had obtained on May 13.

The report claimed to have found sufficient grounds to suspect the involvement of IOM officials in many irregularities and said that the Dean´s Office refused to provide necessary documents to help the investigation.

The report had expressed reservations about the provision of IOM officials giving 85 marks out of the 100-mark interview for foreign students appearing in entrance examinations for MD/MS program.

“The provision substantiates the allegations that IOM officials and TU Teaching Hospital (TUTH) campus chief have been taking fat sums,” the report had declared.

The environment at the IOM and the Maharajgunj Campus has deteriorated so much that everybody, including students and teachers are skeptical about the fairness of entrance exams. Dr Mahesh Khakurel, former Director of TUTH who was also part of that probe team, conceded that the image of IOM has taken a beating. “But I still believe MBBS entrance exams are fair even though there have been serious irregularities in post-graduate entrance exams and those for foreigner quotas,” Dr Khakurel, whose contract was not renewed by IOM apparently for being part of the probe team, said.

Member Secretary of the Bachelor Level Entrance Examination Committee Dr Acharya himself expressed doubts about the fairness of the post graduate entrance exams and those for foreigners. “I am certain the questions of the recent MBBS exams were not leaked but am not so sure about the previous entrance exams for post graduate and foreigners,” Dr Acharya, who was made member secretary of the committee to reduce the influence of the Office of Dean, said.

The Dean of IOM used to be president of the previous entrance examination committees and Assistant Dean the member secretary but Tribhuvan University (TU) suggested a change that kept the Dean out of the committee this time with Assistant Dean leading as the president and one of the teachers working as member secretary.

“TU may also have felt that something was wrong with the entrance exams and perhaps directed a change in composition of the examination committee,” Dr Acharya added as an afterthought hinting that there have been discrepancies in the past.

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